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OCIALISM. 



ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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SOCIALISM. 



SOCIALISM 



ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D. 



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v 




NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

900 BROADWAY, COR. 20TH ST. 
1879. 






COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY 

ANSON D. T. RANDOLPH fe COMPANY. 



new york: 

edward o. jenkins, printer, 

20 North William St, 



CONTENTS , 



I. Socialism in General, 7 

II. Communistic Socialism, .... 24 

III. Anti-Communistic Socialism, . . 65 

IV. Christian Socialism, 88 



SOCIALISM IN GENERAL. 



Throughout Christendom a cloud has 
been gathering, and is gathering still, whose 
shadow falls upon the streets of every great 
city from St. Petersburg to San Francisco. 
Our civilization, whose present special type 
dates back now some four hundred years, in 
spite of all it has achieved and all it promises, 
has an under side to it of terrible menace ; as, 
in ancient Athens, the Cave of the Furies was 
underneath the rock, on whose top sat the 
Court of the Areopagus. This under side of 
our civilization is inequality of social condition, 
keeping pace with the civilization ; no new 
thing in history, but now commanding both 
scientific and popular attention as never be- 
fore : — part of it sheer and simple dividend, 
more or less according to the invested capital 
of talent, industry, and thrift ; part of it Provi- 
dential visitation by sickness, or accident, or 
premature bereavement ; part of it vicissi- 



8 SOCIALISM 

tude, inseparable from complicated interests; 
part of it inexorable retribution, according to 
the observance or infraction of moral laws ; 
part of it, no doubt, wages unfairly restrained ; 
but all of it blurred and hazy ; misunderstood 
by the careless masses who have everything 
at stake ; and misrepresented by the hideous 
fraternity of conspirators who have nothing 
at stake, and are bent on mischief. I am no 
pessimist. It is not ruin that I see ahead, 
but trouble, which can not be too promptly 
met. The Communism of our day is a real 
Cave of the Furies. 

The terms Communism and Socialism are 
much used interchangeably; but they are not 
synonymous. Communism is related to So- 
cialism as species to genus. All Communists 
are Socialists ; but not all Socialists are Com- 
munists. For example, in Germany, where 
Socialism, repeating in this respect the his- 
tory of the old Rationalism in theology, is a 
recent and rank exotic, it is decidedly, even 
fiercely, Communistic; while in France, where 
it is indigenous and finer, it has come to 
be decidedly and soberly Anti-communistic. 
These two kinds of Socialism are not to be 



IN GENERAL. 9 

confounded. Nor yet may we disregard the 
relationship between them. The trunks are 
two ; the root is one. 

I shall therefore speak first of Socialism 
in general ; or, rather, of the problem it un- 
dertakes to solve. 

"The poor ye have with you always/' is 
both historic and prophetic. Inequality of 
social condition is a permanent fact in political 
economy ; variable only in degree. If, by 
some heroic treatment, it could be got rid of 
to-day, it would return to-morrow. Readjust- 
ment would be necessary every few years ; 
every year, might be better still. The causes 
of this inequality, most of them, are likewise 
permanent. Mankind are not equal in en- 
dowment. In stamina of constitution, one is 
strong, and another weak. Brains are larger 
or smaller, coarser or finer. Natural appe- 
tites and passions are more or less overbear- 
ing and vehement. The will is here a master, 
and there a slave. It is not merely that there 
are different grades of work to be done, which 
call for graded remuneration, but, in the same 
grade, one will surpass another. One man 



IO SOCIALISM 

just manages to keep soul and body together, 
barely making the ends of the year meet. 
Another man, whose chances are no better, 
comes out with a surplus. He may, or he 
may not, have earned more, but, being more 
provident and self-denying, he has saved more. 
This surplus is capital ; and if every man had 
saved, labor and capital would never clash. 

All this is exclusive of sickness and acci- 
dent, which, if the sickness be brief, or the 
accident not disabling, the patient himself 
may have provided for in advance ; but if the 
sickness be protracted or hopeless, and the 
accident be crippling, society may have to be 
taxed for the deficit, and the inequality may 
become chronic and burdensome. Exclusive 
also of those distressing casualties which fre- 
quently plunge whole families into sudden and 
helpless poverty by striking down the hus- 
bands and fathers, whose daily labor brought 
them their daily bread. 

There is also the liability to commercial dis- 
aster ; a liability that begins with commerce 
itself; and commerce begins with capital ; and 
capital, a^ we have said, is surplus. Many of 



IN GENERAL. II 

these reverses are only tidal and transient. 
But some are final. To the young man, 
bankruptcy may be only a fall on the ice ; in 
a moment he is up again. The old man, ten 
to one, goes through and under. It has been 
said, that in the United States only five trad- 
ers in a hundred never fail.* In older coun- 
tries, the failures are fewer. 

But the greatest inequality is that which 
comes of immoralities ; the chiefest of which 
are willful indolence, intemperance, and licen- 
tiousness. In their coarser forms these three 
vices give us by far the greater part of all our 
paupers and outcasts. The fashionable vices, 
as they are called, do not provoke immediate 
expulsion from society ; but, by and by, the 
moral lepers will be found outside the lepers' 
gate. Audacity in stealing may threaten us 
every now and then with a new plutocracy, 
more vulgar and flaunting than its predeces- 
sor ; but, after all, there is an inner side to 
the iron bars. 



* Horace Wright, before the Hewitt Committee in New York, 
May 23, 1878, testified that during the last four years 37,000 
firms out of 680,000 h d failed. 



12 SOCIALISM 

The inequality of condition thus indicated, 
was unquestionably greater in the ancient 
than it is in the modern world. Our Chris- 
tian civilization has certainly surpassed the 
Classic. But now in Christendom itself, al- 
though slavery has been abolished, the ine- 
quality is greater than it was four hundred 
years ago, greater than it was one hundred 
years ago. Socialistic writers say the ine- 
quality is still increasing. But France cer- 
tainly is better off than she was fifty years 
ago, and England is better off than she was 
twenty-five years ago. And so perhaps it 
would be safe to say, that the tide has turned; 
that the inequality is now diminishing. But 
the times are critical. Our civilization is 
sharply challenged. Passion, science, con- 
science are all aroused. Under these new 
lights, it is as if the inequaHty were but just 
discovered. It maddens like a new wrong. 
The Furies are not asleep in their Cave. 

Our present civilization, nominally Chris- 
tian, is nevertheless distinctively c nd intense- 
ly materialistic. Its special task has been the 



IN GENERAL. 1 3 

subjugation of nature. It can not be called 
exclusively Protestant, but, along with Prot- 
estantism, whose handmaid it has always 
been, it was cradled amidst inventions and 
discoveries which have changed the very 
channels of history. Printing with movable 
types, Gunpowder for the battlefield, the 
.Mariner's Compass, the Passage round Good 
Hope, the Discovery of new Continents, were 
the signs and wonders of the new epoch. By 
new applications of science, by new sciences, 
both land and sea are considerably more pro- 
ductive than they were. These products are 
w T rought up into endless varieties of form, 
both for use and for ornament. And com- 
merce, which began on the Persian Gulf, has 
now all oceans for its own. 

The result is great wealth, rapidly accu- 
mulated, with an inequality in the distribution 
of it which can not be wholly justified ; an 
inequality which only began not very long 
ago to be redressed : in France, by the Revo- 
lution of 1789, and the Code Napoleon; in 
England, about twenty-five years ago ; in 
Germany, and most other European coun- 



14 SOCIALISM 

tries, not yet. Here in the United States, 
the inequality to be redressed has never 
equalled that in Europe. As a fair represent- 
ative of our present civilization, take England, 
all things considered, the first nation in Eu- 
rope : her industry the most diversified, her 
wealth the greatest, her will the stoutest. 
In the fifteenth century she was quoted 
throughout Europe for the number of her 
land-owners and the comfort of her people."* 
Jn 1873 about 10,000 persons owned two- 
thirds of the whole of England and Wales. 
In Scotland, it is still worse, half the land be- 
ing owned, it is said, by ten or twelve persons. 
Over against this growing wealth and dwin- 
dling number of proprietors, stands the ragged 
army of paupers, of which England is ashamed, f 
The continental contrasts are not so startling ; 
France, indeed, is quite the other way, with 
her 5,000,000 of land-owners. But taking 
Europe as a whole, and comparing the prices 



* Chancellor Fortescue, cited by Laveleye, "Primitive Prop 
erty," p. 263. 

fin 1871/ 900,000 ; in 1878, 726,003. 



IN GENERAL. I 5 

of labor with the. cost of living — food, clothing, 
and shelter, it can be proved that1:he average 
European peasant of the fourteenth century, 
as also of the fifteenth, was better off relative- 
ly than the average European peasant of the 
nineteenth century.* As Froude has said, 
the upper classes have more luxuries, and the 
lower classes more liberty ; while in regard 
to the substantial comforts of life, they are 
farther apart now than they were then. And 
the greater the wealth of the nation as a 
whole, the greater the inequality between its 
upper and its lower classes. 

This is due largely to the extraordinary ad- 
vances made in manufacturing and commerce, 
which have reacted even upon agriculture, 
revolutionizing also its methods. Everywhere 
now machinery carries the day. Inventors 



* In England, for example, when the wages of a common 
farm hand were fourpence a day, a penny went as far as a 
shilling goes now. At this rate, the common laborer should 
now be getting four shillings a day, whereas in fact he is get- 
ting only about two. Mechanics' wages, owing to the Trade 
Unions, are a (rifle higher relatively than they were then. In 
Germany, the highest price paid farm hands anywhere is 56 
cents a day; on the lower Rhine, the price paid is 31 cents; 
in Silesia, only 18 cents. 



1 6 SOCIALISM 

are the potentates, replacing the Alexanders, 
the Caesars, the Ghengis Khans, the Na- 
poleons of the past. Look at the mowing- 
machine, sweeping across the hay-field like 
a charge of cavalry ; but anybody can learn 
to manage it who has wit enough to whet 
and swing a scythe. In one of our cotton 
mills I saw a machine, called the Warper, 
which, from 358 spools, was taking the 358 
threads required for the warp of a web of 
cloth, and was winding them upon a drum or 
cylinder for the loom. When a thread broke, 
the machine instantly stopped, to have the 
ends tied. A child was tending the machine. 
Which was master, the child or the machine ? 
And which was servant, the machine or the 
child ? Our best pocket chronometers, that 
used to be called by the names of their fa- 
mous makers, Patek, Jiirgens, Frodsham, now 
bear the name of the Massachusetts village 
whose factory turns them out by the hundred, 
as some other factory turns out its wooden 
pails. Our machinery is marvelous. Al- 
ready some of it talks. If only it could be 
made to think, very little would be left for 



IN GENERAL. 1 7 

brains to do, except, possibly, to invent a 
new machine occasionally. Some of this 
machinery certainly requires very careful 
handling, but much of it may be handled by 
almost anybody. The very design of it is 
not merely to cheapen and stimulate produc- 
tion, but also to supplement the scarcity of 
skilled labor. And so, apparently, its tendency 
has been to lower the average of artisan abil- 
ity. It not only permits, but encourages the 
employment of women and children, who 
ought rather to be at home, or in school. 
Machinery thus gets the better of manhood. 
Our civilization becomes a pyramid, whose 
base is broad and crushing. Steam drives 
the machinery ; coal generates steam ; and 
men go down for coal with something of the 
risk of regiments going into battle. About 
the year 1350, coal, which had been discover- 
ed some fifty years before, on the banks of 
the Tyne r began to be used for fuel in Lon- 
don.* Now the coal mines of England, be- 



* In 1373 its use was forbidden by proclamation on account 
of its effluvia, supposed to be unhealthy. But. about 1400 the 
consumption of it was extended. 



1 8 SOCIALISM 

sides all the semi-barbarism they breed, are 
costing- her, by accidents of one sort and an- 
other, more than a thousand human lives a 
year. In the old classic Levant, every sailor 
was on deck, with a chance to be schooled by 
sea, and sky, and star, and storm, into the 
higher grades of service. Now we steam 
round the globe in huge leviathans, at the 
mercy of grimy firemen out of sight, deep 
down where day and night, calm and storm, 
summer and winter, are all the same. 

On the whole, unhealthful employments 
appear to multiply with the advancing- arts. 
More and more men take their lives in their 
hands for their daily bread. Brave soldiers, 
you tell me, do the same. Only mercenaries, 
I reply, do that ; and war, no matter how 
righteous it may be, is always terribly de- 
moralizing. Say what you will, things are 
not just as they should be when a man is 
forced into some loathsome and hazardous 
employment because there is nothing else for 
him to do ; and then is so exiled and humbled 
by it, that his children after him shall be al- 
most hopelessly foredoomed to the same em- 



IN GENERAL. Ig 

ployment. Even in armies, where authority 
is absolute, and obedience must be implicit, 
volunteers are generally called for in forlorn 
assaults, partly/to be sure, that only the very 
best may go, but also because it is considered 
simply fair that men should have always every 
possible liberty of choice when their own 
lives are at stake. Pensions likewise await 
the widows and orphans of them that fall. 
Ancient nations made unhealthful employ- 
ments a part of their penal discipline. For- 
feited life gained something by being sent 
" to the mines." 

Another incidental evil, of considerable 
magnitude, is the liability to over-production, 
or, as some prefer to say, disproportionate 
production, which is over-production in some 
directions ; the very calamity, or one of the 
calamities, upon us now. Plethora begets 
paralysis. Hounded on by the hum of our 
own machinery, we manufacture more than is 
wanted. Mills stop, and workmen, narrowed, 
dulled, dwarfed, almost crippled by our sys- 
tem of labor, are flung out helpless upon the 
street. They can not dig, to beg they are 



20 SOCIALISM 

ashamed. They ask only for work ; but, till 
consumption catches up again with produc- 
tion, there is no more work to be had. 

In Europe another characteristic infelicity 
of our present civilization, is the supposed 
necessity of maintaining large standing armies. 
The old Roman Empire, holding the better 
part of Europe, and portions of Asia and Af- 
rica, with a population of a hundred millions, 
half freemen, half slaves, had a regular army 
of 175,000 men. Of auxiliaries, furnished 
by the provinces, there were about as many 
more ; with some 75,000 naval troops. So 
that the whole military strength of the Em- 
pire was a little more than 400,000. Now, 
instead of that one Empire, there are five or 
six powerful kingdoms, several of which are 
stronger in arms than Rome was. For ex- 
ample, France and Germany, having each a 
population of about 40,000,000, have each a 
regular army of nearly 500,000 men. The 
heart of Europe is one vast military encamp- 
ment. Millions of men are under arms all 
the time; consuming without producing; in- 



IN GENERAL. 21 

capacitated for any other employment.* The 
waste is enormous. And in Germany es- 
pecially, where the discipline is sternest, So- 
cialism waxes fiercer and fiercer year by year. 
The cry is, "Disarm." But no nation dares 
disarm alone ; and they can not agree to dis- 
arm together. To such a pass has our civili- 
zation come in about four hundred years, 
since Charles VII., in France, organized for 
himself the first standing army of 22,000 
archers and 900 horsemen ; just about the 
size of our United States army, which an- 
swers our purpose, only because the Atlantic 
Ocean rolls between us and the politics of 
Europe. . 

This inequality of social condition, thus far 
increased, rather than diminished, by our ad- 
vancing civilization, is very painful to think 
of. One has no need to be a Christian, to be 
grieved by it. It offends the most rudimental 
sense of human brotherhood. How has it 
come about that children of the same family 



* See " The Armies of Asia and Europe," by Emory Up- 
won: 1878. 



22 SOCIALISM 

are so far apart in their fortunes? And what 
can be done, not to bridge, but to narrow, 
and, if possible, annihilate, the chasm between 
them ? These are the two cardinal Socialis- 
tic questions of our day, and of all days. 
The former suggests what may be called the 
diagnosis, the latter what may be called the 
therapeutics of Socialism. 

Socialism, in this sense of the word, is not 
a bad thing. It seems very much like philan- 
thropy, but they differ. Philanthropy con- 
cerns itself about the whole nature, condition, 
and destiny of man, for time and for eter- 
ity. Socialism concerns itself about the out- 
ward environment, and ends with time. So- 
cialism claims to be more realistic than phi- 
lanthropy ; it is, in fact, more likely to be sen- 
timental. Pronounced and professional So- 
cialism easily becomes a cant and a quackery. 
Dealing so exclusively with outward prob- 
lems, it prescribes for the symptoms and 
misses the disease. It may not go so far as 
to say, that the individual is for society, rather 
than society for the individual ; men for insti- 
tutions, rather than institutions for men. But 



IN GENERAL. 23 

it does overrate society and underrate the in- 
dividual ; it does overrate institutions and un- 
derrate men. And so it dreams of regenera- 
ting society, without regenerating the individ- 
ual ; or, at all events, it insists upon regener- 
ating society first. 



II. 

COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM. 



This leads me to consider the Commun- 
istic Socialism. 

To-day there is not in our language, nor in 
any language, a more hateful word than Com- 
munism. In Paris seven years ago, in Pitts- 
burg last year, in Berlin this year, it meant, 
and still it means, wages without work, arson, 
assassination, anarchy. In this shape of it, 
the instant duty of society, without taking a 
second breath, is to smite it with the swiftness 
and fury of lightning. Incorrigible tramps, 
packing and prowling round together, de- 
manding the best from door to door, camping 
in farmers' barns, smashing farmers' machines, 
insulting decent men, and terrifying women 
and children, on public roads, should not 
expect to be reasoned with. Mad wretches, 
whose hands smoke with blood, can not be 

(24) 



SOCIALISM. 25 

put out of the way too soon, nor too far. The 
reachers of this satanic crusade against capi- 
tal are not, of course, to be silenced where 
free speech has a genealogy running so much 
farther back than our separate existence as a 
nation ; a freedom which is not of Moses, but 
of the fathers. This planting of dragons' 
teeth is not, I suppose, to be stopped. But 
wild mobs, wrecking railway trains, and sack- 
ing our cities, are a kind of crop which can 
not be mowed down too close. 

Even such barbarities must not provoke us 
to be despisers of history. Communism, in 
its essential genius, is not new, is not con- 
temptible, is not abominable. It is a tradition, 
a philosophy, a gospel. As related to the 
tenure of landed property, it is one of the old- 
est traditions of the race. As a philosophy, 
it deals with those social and civil problems, 
in regard to which mankind have been always 
the most divided, and the most at fault. Its 
gospel, to be sure, has no God in it, only 
humanity— the fraternity of the fatherless ; 
but it preaches social regeneration, and 
promises a millennium. 



26 COMMUNISTIC 

It is a point of very considerable interest 
historically, that Practical Communism should 
have preceded Speculative Communism by so 
long an interval. The origin of property is 
confessedly obscure, like most other origins. 
Hypothesis therefore takes the place of his- 
toric certainty. And opinions have widely 
differed ; for example, as to whether property 
in land came first, or property in the products 
of land ; and in regard to landed property, 
which kind of ownership came first, separate 
or joint, individual or communal. With 
respect to this latter point, the generally 
accepted theory used to be, that individual 
property was the earlier, and communal 
property the later form. The more advanced 
historico-political science of our day has chal- 
lenged this theory, and reversed the order. 
The literature of the subject is very learned 
and able, as well as abundant. This particu- 
lar question of the relative antiquity of in- 
dividual and communal property in land be- 
longs especially to three writers of great 
breadth and penetration, Sir Henry Maine in 
England, Maurer in Germany, and Laveleye 



SOCIALISM. 27 

in France.* Of different tendencies, predis- 
posing them to different applications and uses 
of the principle involved, these three eminent 
writers are agreed in the conclusion, after in- 
dependent and great research, that common 
property in land was, in many parts of the 
world, perhaps everywhere, undoubtedly the 
original form of ownership. 

This antiquity of Communism, almost newly 
discovered, certainly never before seen in such 
a light as now, is evidently doing a great deal 
to strengthen the argument for it, even with 
people who have not been in the habit of car- 
ing much for historic precedents. Commun- 
ism, once treated with scorn as a raw and 
recent heresy, now claims for itself the honors 
of age. The ancient Dalmatians, according 
to Strabo (vii. 5, 5), divided their acres every 
seven years ; the Vaccaei in Spain, according 
to Diodorus Siculus (v. 34), every year. The 

*Sir Henry Maine, first in his lectures at the Middle Tem- 
ple (1854-62), afterwardin his "Ancient Law " (1861), and 
"Village Communities" (1871) ; Maurer, in his " Einleitung 
zur Geschichte der Mark-Hof-Dorf-und Stadt Verfassung " 
(1854), and "Mark Verfassung " (1856) ; and Laveleye in his 
" De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives" (1874), trans- 
lated into English by Marriott (1878). 



28 COMMUNISTIC 

ancient Germans, according- both to Caesar 
(B. G. iv. i), and to Tacitus (Germ. § 26), 
were Communists. So, also, in Russia, in 
India, in the island of Java, in Mexico, and 
in other countries, traces are found of the old 
joint tenure of land.* Christian people are 
reminded of the Agrarianism of the Mosaic 
legislation, the general basis of which was 
tribal, with a provision for bringing back, 
every fiftieth year, every acre of the land, 
except what belted the Levitical cities, to 
some representative of its original proprietor. 
Still more account is made of the pentecostal 
Communism of the Apostolic Church. It is 
idle to deny it, as some have done. The 
Apostolic Communism, to be sure, was not 
obligatory and absolute, but voluntary, and 
might be partial ; still it was Communism. 

This argument from antiquity — heathen, 
Hebrew, Christian, is not to be brushed 
away by a breath. We must be able to show 
that the earliest and oldest things are only 
sometimes, not always, the best. Blos- 
soms are not better than fruit. The human 

*See Woolsey's "Political Science," § 25. 



SOCIALISM. 29 

race must have had an infancy ; not as I sup- 
pose of barbarism, but of crude capacity 
awaiting development. Ideas and institutions 
of every kind — religious, moral, political, 
must have grown ; but especially political 
ideas and institutions, as pertaining more to 
what is outward, mutable, and transient. On 
no other ground can we defend the Patri- 
archal and Jewish economies. 

Communism, we may say then, is not ex- 
actly barbarous, though frequently found 
amongst barbarians, but infantile. It was 
admirably suited to the Hebrews — a people 
of nomadic parentage, who were to be held 
back from commerce that they might be held 
back also from heathen contamination. And 
yet, for some reason or reasons, the Mosaic 
jubilee arrangement was so poorly observed, 
that Michaelis doubts whether it was ever 
observed at all # Ewald thinks that after hav- 
ing declined, the observance of it was revived 
by Josiah. On the whole, the Agrarian idea 
appears never to have been very fully realized. 
As for Christian Jerusalem, it was evidently 
an exceptional city in the Apostolic age. Men 



30 COMMUNISTIC 

were gathered there out of all countries. 
Their new faith as Christians practically out- 
lawed them. They were poor — very poor ; 
distressed, a great many of them. Some 
Uc^A were well off. It occurred to them to try the 
<h+<-^ experiment of a partial Communism. Whether 
u, L~v*a^ it was proposed, or only consented to, by the 
•^^^•"^Apostles, does not appear. It is certainly 
not recommended in any Apostolic Epistle. 
/Vt ,\ Furthermore, the Jerusalem Church was al- 

ways poor, always an object of charity to 
other Churches ; and the Communistic experi- 
ment was not tried anywhere else. 

Later on, in the fourth century, the Mo- 
nastic Communism makes its appearance. It 
was a good thing for Europe in the perilous 
infancy of its institutions ; a good thing down 
even to the time of Charlemagne — since then, 
a bad thing. 

Shakerism, of British parentage, but now 
almost exclusively American, is a curious 
compound of religious enthusiasm and of 
worldly thrift. Strictly Communistic with re- 
spect to property, and rejecting the family life, 
it grows slowly when it grows at all, by ex- 



SOCIALISM. 31 

ternal accretion ; and is so sincere, so inoffen- 
sive, so industrious and frugal, but also so 
entirely exceptional and so insignificant nu- 
merically (less than 2,500 in 18/4), that no 
reason can be given why it should die very 
soon. Indeed, it appears to have been gain- 
ing in numbers during the last few years of 
commercial depression. 

Mormonism is a great national humiliation, 
which we must have deserved, or we should 
not have had it. But it is very far from being 
exclusively, or even predominantly, American. 
It takes the bad blood of all Europe to keep 
it agoing. It is a vile, polygamous Com- 
munism, which, we hope, may not be too 
long in dying. 

Of other Communistic Societies in the 
United States, numbering in all about 2,500 
persons, in fourteen settlements, one is 
French, two are American, and the rest 
mostly German. Only two of them, the 
American Societies at Oneida and Walling- 
ford, practice community of wives and chil- 
dren. The Rappists, or Harmonists, near 
Pittsburg, numbering 1 10, and dwindling, 



32 COMMUNISTIC 

are celibates like the Shakers. All the others 
maintain the ordinary family life. All, except 
the Icarians in Iowa, originally founded by 
Cabet, now numbering only sixty-five per- 
sons in eleven families, have a religious basis. 
Most of them are mainly agricultural in their 
industry, and all are prosperous ; but the pros- 
perity is that of peasants. Life has little va- 
riety, or breadth, or uplift/ Nobody supposes 
that such Communism can ever become gen- 
eral* 

Antiquity certainly lends a charm to this 
Practical Communism. We look back upon 
it with an interest akin to that which is felt in 
looking at the plows, hand-mills, and looms 
still to be seen in the Orient. Its antiquity, 
however, is more against it than for it. The 
real age of gold is not behind us with 
heathen poets, but before us with Hebrew 
prophets; and the resort to Communism, now 
so fervently urged upon us, would be a retro- 
gression, not indeed to, but certainly towards 
barbarism. 



* See " The Communistic Societies of the United States/ 3 
By Charles Norclhoff. New York : 1875. 



SOCIALISM. 33 

Speculative Communism has a brilliant his- 
tory. It begins about six hundred years be- 
fore Christ with Phaleas of Chalcedon, whom 
Milton speaks of as the first to recommend 
the equalization of property in land. 

Plato favors Communism. In the fifth book 
of the " Republic/' Socrates is made to ad- 
vocate, not merely community of goods, but 
also community of wives and children. This 
was no after-dinner debauch in the groves of 
the Academy, as Milton too severely sug- 
gests.* It was a logical conclusion from a mis- 
taken premise. The individual was to be ab- 
sorbed in the organism. The ideal aimed at, 
was the unity of the State, whose pattern ap- 
pears to have been partly Pythagorean, and 
partly Spartan. In regard to property, the 
formulated purpose was, not to abolish wealth, 
but to abolish poverty. In the " Laws " (v. 
13), Plato would allow to the richest citizen 
four times as much income as to the poorest. 
In regard to women, the aim was not sensual 
indulgence, but the propagation and rearing 
of the fittest offspring. This community of 

* " Areopagitica," Milton's Prose Works, ii. 71, 72. 



34 COMMUNISTIC 

wives and children was for the ruling class 
only ; not for the husbandmen, nor for the 
artificers. So also, probably, the community 
of goods. We say probably, for the scheme 
is not wrought out in all its details, and Plato 
himself had no hope of seeing his dream 
realized till kings are philosophers, or philos- 
ophers are kings. 

The echoes of this Platonic speculation 
have been loud and long. About the year 
316 B.C., Evemerus, sent eastward by Cas- 
sander, King of Macedon, on a voyage of 
scientific discovery, reports in his "Sacred 
History "* the finding of an island, which he 
calls jRanchaia, the seat of a Republic, whose 
citizens were divided into the three classes of 
Priests, Husbandmen, and Soldiers ; where all 
property was common ; and all were happy. 

In 1 5 16 Sir Thomas More published his 
" Utopia ; " evidently of Platonic inspiration. 
More also chose an island for his political and 
social Paradise. He had Crete in mind. His 
island, crescent-shaped, and 200 miles wide 



* Reported by Diodorus Siculus, Hist. v. 42-46, 



SOCIALISM. 35 

at the widest point, contained 54 cities. It 
had community of goods, but not of women. 

The " Civitas Solis " of Campanella, publish- 
ed in 1623, was in imitation perhaps of More's 
" Utopia." This City of the Sun stood on a 
mountain in Ceylon, under the equator, and 
had a community both of goods and of 
women. 

About the same time Lord Bacon amused 

himself by writing the " New Atlantis," a 

mere fragment, the porch of a building that 

was never finished. 

In the oreat ferment of Cromwell's time the 
<_> 

" Oceana" of Harrington appeared (1656); a 
book famous in its day, with high traditional 
repute ever since, but now seldom read ex- 
cept by the very few who feel themselves 
called upon to master the literature of the 
subject. Hallam pronounces it a dull, pedan- 
tic book ; and nobody disputes the verdict. 
Harrington advocates a division of land, no 
one to have more, than two thousand pounds' 
(ten thousand dollars') worth. The upshot 
of it all would be, a moderate aristocracy of 
the middle classes. 



$6 COMMUNISTIC 

Such books belong to a class by them- 
selves, which may be called Poetico-Political ; 
aesthetic, scholarly, humane, and hopeful. 
They are not addressed to the masses. If 
they make revolutions, it is only in the long 
run. They are not battles, nor half battles, 
but only the bright wild dreams of tired sol- 
diers in the pauses of battles. 

Communistic books with iron in them — 
Marcian's iron for Attila, are not modern 
only, but recent. Modern Communism, now 
grown so surly and savage everywhere, be- 
gan mildly enough. As a system, it is mostly 
French, name and all. The famous writers 
are Saint-Simon, Fourier, Considerant, Proud- 
hon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc. The earlier 
apostles, Saint-Simon, who died five years be- 
fore, and Fourier, who died seven years after, 
the Revolution of 1830, which they did so 
much indirectly to bring about, had for their 
disciples the aristocratic youth of France. 
Considerant, whose " Destinee Sociale" ap- 
peared between 1834 and 1844, followed, in 
the same path. These men were philoso- 
phers of the dreamy sort, reconstructing so- 



SOCIALISM. 37 

ciety, as the walls of Troy were built, with 
strains of Olympian music. Their whole 
tone was serenely Academic. They appealed 
only to what is most generous in human senti- 
ment. 

In Cabet's "Voyage en Icarie " (1842), 
and still more in Louis Blanc's " L'Organiza- 
tion du travail" (1840), we begin to hear the 
ring of steel forging into something sharper 
than trowels. In 1840 Proudhon tells France, 
and tells Europe, that "Property is Robbery." 
More pestilent words were never spoken. In 
1848 this short sentence was the dagger that 
stabbed the Republic of Lamartine. The 
man on horseback soon hove in sight. The 
New Empire rode in, bringing with it the 
prosperity that comes of order, the burdens 
that come of glory. Then followed champion- 
ship of the Latin races, the Mexican Protec- 
torate, the Suez pageant, wicked war with 
Germany, and terrible Sedan. France went 
mad. The wild Marseillaise rang out, the 
Commune stamped its angry foot, evil spirits 
answered the call, and the streets of Paris 
were hot and red with flames and blood, as 



38 COMMUNISTIC 

never before, and probably never to be again. 
So perished Communism in France. 

Perished, I say, in France; but not in Eu- 
rope, nor in America. In Russia, less than 
twenty years ago, it began, as it did in France, 
with scholars and students, invading and in- 
fecting the Universities.* Now it poisons the 
blood, and maddens the brains, of artisans 
and peasants. Self-christened, Nihilism de- 
scribes it well ; its ambition is not to re-con- 
struct, but simply to destroy. 

German Communism is hardly of age yet, 
but old for its years. Its recent growth has 
been rapid, antagonizing the rapid develop- 
ment of the new German Empire, whose 
" Blood and Iron" {Blut unci Eiseri) it de- 
tests, denounces, and denes. Like almost 
everything else German, Bismarck and his 
Empire of course excepted, it is eminently 
scholastic. It wears glasses, studies history, 
idolizes science, and, whether it builds or 
fights, always observes the rules. Its chief 
apostles have been Ferdinand Lasalle and 



* The term " Nihilist " was first used in 1862 by Tourga- 
nieff in his novel, " Peres et Enfans." 



SOCIALISM. 39 

Karl Marx. Lasalle was only thirty-eight 
years of age when he fell in a duel in 1864, 
barely two years after becoming an acknowl- 
edged leader. Marx is still living, an exile in 
London. Lasalle, an author of books, but 
better known, and more effective, as a prolific 
and brilliant pamphleteer, was comparatively 
moderate and patriotic, leading the right wing 
of German Communism. The left wing fol- 
lowed Marx, till, in 1875, the right wing went 
over to his side, and he has since commanded 
the whole army. From his cottage in Lon- 
don, he keeps his glass upon the field, and 
directs every movement. His voluminous 
work "On Capital" shows us what he is, 
and what he wants. He cares no more for 
Germany than he cares for Greece or Egypt. 
He loudly proclaims his allegiance only to 
labor, though living himself, as Lasalle did, 
in luxury. Private capital must be abolished, 
all industries adopted, organized, and man- 
aged by the State, money advanced by the 
State to individuals as may be needed in the 
development of new enterprises, wages largely 
increased, family life reconstructed, and God 



40 COMMUNISTIC * 

dethroned. Such is German Communism, 
lumbering pedantic volumes, condensed in 
countless pamphlets, inculcated by more than 
forty journals, sustained, in 1877, by nearly 
half a million of voters out of five millions 
and a half, as yet only every eleventh voter, 
but represented in Parliament by a steadily- 
growing- party, that may soon hold the bal- 
ance of power.* It blundered when it fired 
once and again at the brave old Emperor. 

In America we are getting the refugees : 
Frenchmen, disgusted that Paris proposes no 
more barricades ; Germans, willing to endure 
less science, if they may only find more safety ; 
not much like those English refugees, so long 
ago, who said their prayers, and sang their 
hymns, on "the wild New England shore. " 
These new fugitives, too many of them, fly 
hunted by justice, or to forestall the hunt 
In ordinary times, their bad breath would be 
lost in the fresh breezes of the Continent. 
Just now they speak to ears that listen for idle 



* In the recent election, the number of Socialistic members, 
which had been steadily increasing, was cut down from twelve 
to nine. 



SOCIALISM. 41 

hands, to hearts that are aching at the cry of 
hungry mouths at home. Our Roman Cath- 
olic Irish workingmen, as hard pressed as 
any of us, are behaving much better than 
might have been expected ; partly, no doubt, 
because our institutions are schooling them, 
and partly because they have more common 
sense of their own than they had the credit 
of, but also, and largely, because their Church 
has denounced the agitators. Of strictly in- 
digenous Communism, there is very little 
among us ; and there would have been still 
less, but for the unparalleled industrial pa- 
ralysis of the last five years. It is out of place 
here ; it suits neither our blood nor our ge- 
ography. The Teutonic instinct of individu- 
alism, which, with other things, may be relied 
upon to carry Germany safely through the 
impending crisis in her history, belongs also 
to us as an essentially Teutonic people, and, 
with other things, one of which is an immense 
reserve of cheap^ good land, may be relied 
upon to save us also from the crushing des- 
potism of this new Social Democracy. 

How Russia shall deal with her Commun 



42 COMMUNISTIC 

ism, is a Russian question. How Germany- 
shall deal with hers, is a German question. 
How we shall deal with ours, is our question, 
which may have to be answered sooner, and 
answered more sharply, than perhaps we 
think. 

Red-handed Communism would stand no 
chance at all here. We have in the United 
States nearly 3,000,000 of land-owners, firmly 
grasping the continent* They will not be 
robbed of their acres. They are not to be 
frightened into hiring men whose services 
they do not need. Other shots may yet be 
heard round the world, besides those fired by 
Massachusetts farmers at Concord bridge, 
shots fired, next time, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
Indiana, or Illinois. I will risk our farmers. 
No French engineering could barricade a 
prairie ; no German bullets shoot off the na- 
tion's head. 

One thing greatly needed now and always, 
is less fear of ruffians. Have you never ob- 



* The United States Census for 1870 gives 2,659,985 farms 
averaging 153 acres. In i860 the average size was 199, and 
n 1850, 203 acres. 



SOCIALISM. 43 

served how often burglars g-et the worst of it 
in a struggle, with every advantage on their 
side except the courage that goes with a good 
conscience ? The brutal mob, which some of 
us saw surging down Broadway, in the sum- 
mer of 1863, flushed from the sacking of the 
Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, 
was swept from the pavement in less than ten 
minutes by a squad of resolute policemen, 
using only their clubs. The German army at 
Austerlitz had muscle enough ; at Sedan it 
had brain enough. But institutions that are 
not subverted, may yet be rudely shaken, or 
radically changed. In the last analysis it will 
be found that Caesar was Rome's escape from 
Communism. The rich were being plundered 
by the poor ; they lifted up their voices in 
wild alarm, and the avenging eagles hastened 
across the Rubicon. History may easily be 
persuaded to repeat her retributions. Com- 
munism is in the air. Section is poisoned 
against section, class against class, interest 
against interest, The poorer West and South 
are incited to despoil the richer East. Farm- 
er, jnanufacturer, and merchant, natural 



44 COMMUNISTIC 

friends, are being told that they are natural 
enemies. Long-continued commercial dis- 
tress, instead of being recognized as a com- 
mon calamity, in Europe as well as here, with 
special reasons for it in our own case, grow- 
ing out of the war that saved the Union, is 
fiercely denounced as the crime of a class. 
Men, or the representatives of men that 
loaned their money to the ' Government, to 
carry on the war that saved it, money loaned 
in patriotic faith, on condition it should not be 
taxed, such men are stigmatized as "bloated 
bondholders." The outcry is infamous. No 
matter what the amount maybe, one billion or 
two billions. No matter where the bonds now 
are, here or in Europe. No matter in whose 
hands they are, though Shylock should hold 
them all. The bonds speak for themselves ; 
they went for the saving of the nation's life. 
The thought of taxing them, with exemption 
from taxation written as it were in blood across 
their face, is a dishonest thought, basely dis- 
honest. " Bloated bondholders ! " Dema- 
gogues are supposed to know what they are, 
about. Nicknames just now are only cheap 



SOCIALISM. 45 

substitutes for arguments ; but, by and by, 
they mean brickbats, and paving-stones, and 
torches, and firebrands, when the mob, which 
the atmosphere of great cities always holds 
in solution, begins to blacken the pavement. 
The situation is a grave one. It is no pro- 
cession of peaceful industries that I see 
marching now. Labor and Capital, from op- 
posing camps, are moving on towards one an- 
other ; to meet, I hope and believe, as Esau 
and Jacob met amongst the mountains of 
Gilead, to be reconciled; but, it may be, to 
meet as Pompey and Caesar met at Pharsalia. 
I confess I expect no Caesar. I find on our 
map no Rubicon. But then I expect to see 
this Communistic madness rebuked and 
ended. If not rebuked and ended, I shall 
have to say, as many a sad-eyed Roman 
must have said, nineteen hundred years ago, 
I prefer Civilization to the Republic. 

I have said that Communism is in the air. 
What is Communism ? There is no mystery 
about it. It is simply the absorption of the 
individual in the community, the citizen in the 
State. The individual as such has no rights ; 



46 COMMUNISTIC 

the community has absorbed them all. What 
the community ordains, must be done, or en- 
dured. Not relations only, but employments, 
everything, must be determined by the State. 
Not only must everybody work, but every- 
body must do just the kind, and just the 
amount, of work the community shall set him 
to do. In short, the State undertakes to do 
everything, or almost everything, which in- 
dividuals and corporations now do. The 
State owns all the lands, and all the houses; 
all the railways, factories, and banks ; and all 
the vessels. There is no more any private 
property or private business. No one shall 
even braid for himself a palm-leaf hat, or 
cobble his own shoes. If it be answered, 
that no one will wish to do any such thing for 
himself, having no occasion to do it, it follows, 
that present motives to industry and economy 
will have ceased to operate. The inability to 
better one's condition will have extinguished 
the desire to do it. The right to do it will 
be no longer debatable. All freedom has 
perished. The citizen is nothing, the State 
is all ; and, in a Republic, that all may be 



SOCIALISM. 47 

barely a majority of one, and that one car- 
ried drunk to the polls. One drunken voter 
may thus be master of us all. It is a mon- 
strous doctrine. But we have got something 
more to do than howl it down. It is a phi- 
losophy, and has got to be argued down. )yJ ax 
First of all, we should make it clear to our- 
selves, and so be prepared to make it plain to 
others, that the State is for the citizen, not the 
citizen for the State ; society for the individual, 
not the individual for society. The greatest 
of teachers has said, that even God's Sab- 
bath was made for man ; not merely to serve 
him as he is, but to make him still more of a 
man. Institutions are mortal; men immortal. 
The historical, temporal Judgment is of insti- 
tutions and organisms. The final Judgment 
is of individuals, each one of us all giving ac- 
count of himself to God. Personality is au- 
gust. Consciously responsible to moral law, 
we must have perfect freedom, in order to be 
up to the responsibility. And so the humblest 
of us has rights, which all the rest of us, 
banded together, may not dare to touch. I 
have a right to my life ; and society, without 



48 COMMUNISTIC 

my consent, shall not take it away, till it has 
been forfeited by crime. I have a right to 
my liberty ; and society shall not enslave me. 
I have a right to my property, whether earned 
or inherited ; and society shall not use it, 
against my wishes, without appraisal and in- 
demnity. The final end of society is not 
itself, but the individual. What will Germany 
be good for, when a plain, godly peasant like 
Hans Luther of Eisleben is no longer pos- 
sible? What shall we be good for, when 
Pained "Age of Reason" has supplanted 
Butler's "Analogy?" Society, of course, 
has its sphere, its prerogatives, its authority. 
It may command me to assist the policeman 
in arresting a murderer. It may send me in- 
to battle. Society is under bonds to defend 
us all, in defending itself; and I am a party 
to the contract. Society may build its roads 
and bridges ; but when it crosses my meadow, 
or hurts my business, it must settle with me 
for the damage. Not to do it, is Communism. 
Society may abate nuisances ; but it may not 
undertake the organization of labor or ex- 
change. It may not tell me what I shall do 



SOCIALISM. 49 

for a living. That society would only ruin 
our industries in adopting and trying to man- 
age them, is almost demonstrable. Practical 
business men, who are succeeding in business, 
pronounce it a very foolish scheme, which has 
always miserably failed. But this is the lesser 
argument against it. It would be usurpation 
and outrage. These rights that I have named, 
rights of person and of property, are not inalien- 
able only, but awfully sacred ; and somehow 
or other, sometime or other, the infringement 
of them is avenged. The Persians have a 
proverb, that when the orphan cries, the 
throne of the Almighty rocks from side to 
side. The Persians are Mohammedans, and 
perhaps they are too religious. It may be 
the theists are all mistaken. Possibly there 
is no throne to rock, and no Almighty Person 
anywhere above us. But in history I think I 
find an Almighty Something, whose Day of 
Judgment is always rising, and never sets; 
and I think I hear the sound of mills, whose 
grinding is exceeding fine. 

But rights imply duties ; and duties rights. 
Society, in absorbing the individual, becomes 



50 COMMUNISTIC 

responsible for his support ; while the individ- 
ual, in being absorbed, becomes entitled to 
support. This was the doctrine of Proud- 
hon's famous Essay. Nature, he said, is 
bountiful. She has made ample provision for 
us all, if each could only get his part. Birth 
into the world entitles one to a living in it. 
This sounds both humane and logical. And 
it is logical. The right of society to absorb, 
implies the duty to support ; while the duty 
of the individualto be absorbed, implies the 
right to be supported. But premise and con- 
clusion are equally false. Society has no 
right to absorb the individual, and conse- 
quently is under no obligation to support him, 
so long as he is able to support himself; while 
the individual has no business to be absorbed, 
and no right to be supported. Experience 
has taught us to beware of the man who says 
that society owes him a living. The farmer 
has learned not to leave his cellar door open, 
when such theorists are about. Society has 
entered into no contract to support anybody 
who is able to support himself, any more than 
Providence has entered into such a contract. 



SOCIALISM. 51 

Providence certainly is a party to no such 
contract ; or there was a flagrant breach of 
contract in the Chinese famine lately ; and 
there have been a great many such breaches 
of contract, first and last. I read in an old 
book, which some Communists have called 
Agrarian, that the God of the Hebrews used 
to hear the young ravens when they cried; 
but I do not read that no young raven ever 
starved. 

Communism, as it has seemed to me, owes 
much of its present vitality and vigor to sev- 
eral widely prevalent popular hallucinations, 
pertaining to property in general, to money 
and capital in particular ; hallucinations which 
must be carefully and patiently refuted. 

Political economy has been taught and stud- 
ied now, with some diligence, amongst En- 
glish-speaking peoples especially, for several 
generations. It is more than a hundred years 
since Adam Smith published his " Wealth of 
Nations." And yet I will venture to say, that 
no science, claiming to be popular, is so 
poorly understood. Its very first principles, 



52 COMMUNISTIC 

and plainest lessons, are constantly contra- 
vened. Communism of course finds its op- 
portunity in this stupid treatment of a science 
which no free people can afford to slight. Of 
all collateral studies, not one just now is of 
more immediate importance to theological 
students than this. The old Hebrew proph- 
ets, leaders of public opinion in their day and 
nation, were more than political economists, 
they were statesmen. The time, I will not 
say is coming, it has already come, when ev- 
ery publicly educated man in this nation 
should understand the laws of political econ- 
omy, and be able to make them plain to the 
masses. 

Prominent among the hallucinations re- 
ferred to, is the one pertaining to money. 
What is money? Not this Five-Dollar Bill, 
which is worth absolutely just what the mak- 
ing of it cost, paper and printing, no more, 
no less. Here is a Paper Dollar, issued by 
Kossuth in 1852, in the name of the Republic 
of Hungary, that was to be. It cost me an- 
other Paper Dollar, redeemable in coin, which 
was a part of my contribution to the Hun- 



SOCIALISM. 53 

garian cause. It cost the Republic that was 
to be just what the paper and the printing 
cost, was worth that then, and now is worth 
the value of the paper. And here is a Five- 
Dollar Bill, issued in Richmond in 1863, in the 
name of another Republic that was to be. It 
cost that Republic what the paper and the 
printing cost, was worth it then ; but now is 
worth only what it might sell for as a souvenir. 
These bits of paper are not money, never were 
money, and never will be ; they are only cur- 
rency. Bank of England notes are not mon- 
ey. Money can not be printed. The only 
money for civilized peoples is coin of gold 
and of silver — the precious metals, as they 
are called. They come out of the ground 
by the sweat of human brows, represent 
human labor, and are accordingly of intrinsic 
worth. They are not only worth all they 
cost, but they have actually cost all they are 
worth. This idea of making money by print- 
ing or writing it, is absurd. Any farmer, any 
mechanic, any merchant, who entertains this 
idea, and acts upon it, unless he dies very 
soon, will live long enough to come to grief. 



54 COMMUNISTIC 

Any Parliament or Congress that tries to do 
it, commits either a folly or a fraud. The 
time for mincing matters has gone by. Plain 
words are best. Inflation of our currency is 
Communism. Somebody is cheated and 
plundered by it. Anybody who advocates it, 
calling himself a statesman, scornful of sci- 
ence, scornful of history, is either an igno- 
ramus or a demagogue. 

An exaggerated estimate of the amount of 
money in existence, is another popular hallu- 
cination that helps the Communists. Of sil- 
ver, used largely in the Orient, the statistics 
are not quite so exactly ascertainable. But 
of gold, the Occidental standard of value, the 
total amount in existence has been computed 
at about eight billions, or eight thousand mil- 
lions. Melted down and massed, it would 
make a block sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, 
and a trifle more than twelve and one-quarter 
feet high. Coined into Five-Dollar gold pieces 
(Half-Eagles or Sovereigns), and served out 
amongst us all of the human family, giving us 
each a Half-Eagle or Sovereign, there would 



SOCIALISM. 55 

be only about enough to go round. And how 
long do you think it would last ? Longer, of 
course, in Hong Kong, or Yokohama ; but 
here in New York, it would last our theolog- 
ical students only about a week. 

Land also is property. And what is land 
worth ? As mere land, unimproved, much 
less than is commonly supposed. To get at 
the intrinsic value of land, you must go back 
to barbarism. Where a hundred civilized 
men now till the soil, imagine ten nomads, 
tending their flocks and herds ; where ten 
nomads pitch their tents, imagine one savage, 
hunting and fishing. This is the ascertained 
ratio of civilization to nomadism, of nomad- 
ism to barbarism. Stop plowing now with 
your oxen, and what was worth a hundred 
dollars, will be worth only ten. Let your 
cattle all go wild again in the woods, and 
what was worth ten dollars, will be worth 
only one. I spend my summers by Narra- 
gansett Bay, in Massachusetts, on a farm 
near Mount Hope, where, a little more than 
200 years ago, King Philip, chief of the* 



56 COMMUNISTIC 

Wampanoags, fished and hunted. It is a 
farm of about eighty acres. Had we belong- 
ed to the Wampanoags — my family and I, 
with only wild land round our wigwam, we 
should have required at least eight thousand 
acres, to be as well off as we now are. And 
so it is, that landed property is largely hu- 
man ; ninety-nine one hundredths of it. Even 
these improvements, as they are called, which 
give land so nearly the whole of its rated 
value, would very soon be lost, and disap- 
pear entirely, should tillage cease. After all, 
and always, it is the farmer's foot, that both 
measures and makes the farm. 

But the one hallucination which most of 
all, perhaps, inflames the discontent and cu- 
pidity of Communism, relates to capital. It 
is constantly talked of as if it were some 
mysterious power, out of sight like gravita- 
tion or electricity, but of tremendous potency, 
liable at any time to strike in avalanche or 
thunderbolt. What is it ? Simply surplus : 
that which is saved and goes over of what 
the farmer raises ; that which is saved and 



SOCIALISM. 57 

goes over of the workman's wages. Any 
farmer may have capital, who will consume 
less than he raises. Any mechanic may have 
it, who will spend less than he earns. My 
dollar spent has to be earned over again ; I 
am no better off than I was before, and must 
go back to the field or shop. My dollar 
saved gets me ready for the rainy day. And 
my dollar is as good as yours. 

What may be called the chronology of 
capital, and the amount of it in existence, are 
also very wildly overrated. It is imagined to 
be a vast, almost inexhaustible fund, that has 
been a very long time in accumulating. Great 
wealth, especially of nations, is supposed to 
have begun a long way back, like a great 
oak, or the delta of some great river. The 
wealth of England, for example, is supposed 
to be the growth of centuries. But John 
Stuart Mill has asserted that a great part of 
it is only about twelve months old. And this 
can easily be proved. It is equally true of 
ourselves. Our principal crops are three : 
hay, grain, cotton. The hay is fed to our 

cattle ; in a year, it is nearly all gone. The 
3* 



58 COMMUNISTIC 

grain is divided between our cattle and our- 
selves ; in a year, that, too, is nearly all gone. 
The cotton lasts longer, but as cloth, not as 
crude cotton. Of our minerals, gold and sil- 
ver of course are enduring, but the crop of 
them in our country is less than a quarter 
part as valuable as the hay crop. Iron lasts 
some time, but wears out after a while. Coal 
is consumed about as fast as We mine it. The 
products of the sea are more perishable still. 
Fish, unless salted, in less than a week would 
be good for nothing but to dress the land. 
These products of the land and sea make up 
a considerable part of what we call property. 
Very little of it is spontaneous. Most of it 
comes by toil. Human brain and muscle are 
in it. Proclaim now your jubilee of sloth ; 
let all this industry instantly and absolutely 
cease; unyoke the oxen, call up the miners, 
shut down the mills, stop the vessels, stop the 
carts ; and in twelve months' time what be- 
comes of your property ? Gone, a great part 
of it, like smoke into the sky. 

What else have we for property ? Roads, 
of course. Some bits of old Roman roads 



SOCIALISM. 59 

have lasted well, though neither Italy, nor 
any other country, is much the better for them 
to-day. But our roads have to be mended 
every year, or they would soon become im- 
passable. Railroads have to be mended al- 
most every day. 

Buildings are also property : Pyramids, 
Temples, Cathedrals, Churches, Warehouses, 
but especially the houses we live in. How 
much buildings are w r orth, depends upon how 
long they will last. To determine this, we 
must take the original cost of construction 
for a dividend, and for a divisor the percent- 
age required to keep the buildings in good re- 
pair. Measured by this rule, the Pyramids 
are the best pieces of property in existence. 
If let alone, as they should have been, they 
would never have needed repairing. But of 
what use are they ? Egyptian Temples rank 
next. But the Egyptian climate is exception- 
al. St. Peter's Church in Rome is said to 
have cost $48,000,000 ; but $30,000 have to 
be spent upon it every year to keep it in re- 
pair. Let it alone for fifty years, and what pro- 
portion of its original cost would any business 



6o COMMUNISTIC 

man be willing to bid for it ? How long- do 
our dwelling-houses last? Not so very much 
longer than the black tents of the Bedaween. 

We have property also on the sea : vessels 
of wood and of iron. How long do they 
last ? Where is the ship on whose deck Nel- 
son was shot ? Where is our own frigate, the 
Constitution ? Where is the first steamboat 
that went up the Hudson ? 

The upshot of the matter is, that a great 
part of what we call our property comes and 
goes with the revolving seasons. Commun- 
ists and children may dream of inexhaustible 
wealth locked up and guarded by hard and 
heartless men, who might unlock it if they 
would. So may poets sing of perennial 
fountains, like those which burst from the 
roots of Hermon to make the Jordan. But 
let Hermon miss the rains of a single winter, 
Hermon and the range to which it belongs, 
and soon there will be no more Jordan. 

It remains to glance at what we have called 
the Gospel of Communism. The expression 
may have grated on your ears. The points 



SOCIALISM. 6 1 

are mostly of contradiction, not of resem- 
blance. Our Christian Gospel has in it the 
three elements of incarnation, atonement, and 
regeneration. The Gospel of Communism 
has no God in it at all, incarnate or any 
other. And it preaches neither atonement 
nor regeneration, for it recognizes no sin, 
only disease to be cured, or discord to be at- 
tuned. There is trouble enough in the world, 
but it all comes of inequality of social con- 
dition. Change that, and all will be changed. 
Equalize conditions, and there shall be " no 
more sea." Equalize conditions, and Paradise 
returns. Return it shall, says Communism, 
for Communism, like Christianity, is militant, 
only the weapons of its warfare are carnal. 
Equality of condition may be only preached 
as yet ; by and by, when converts are multi- 
plied, it shall be carried, as Mohammed car- 
ried Arabia, by force of arms. Enforced 
equality of social condition, that is the con- 
summation ; equality enforced, and re-en- 
forced, from generation to generation. 

Behold now the recovered Paradise. Nat- 
are is here, with all her laws, but with no 



62 COMMUNISTIC 

transparency of land, or sea, or sky. No 
light shines through. We have science, such 
as it is, the science of second causes. Poets 
and theologians are all dead. There is no 
God, nothing but unconscious force, which 
hears no prayers. " Like as a father pitieth 
his children/' is part of an old Hebrew lulla- 
by. We need no pity, only an equal chance. 
Humanity is sufficient unto itself; is Provi- 
dence enough, and Grace enough. There 
are no families any more, not even a family, 
but only a flock or a herd. Human brother- 
hood is cant and nonsense, where no child 
calls any man father on earth, and there is no 
Father in Heaven. We are not brothers, 
only companions, oarsmen together in the 
galley, oxen together in the furrow. We 
have no favors to ask of anybody. All we 
need, and all we want, is wages for our work. 
As for work, organization of labor takes care 
of that, both to find it for us, and to keep us 
at it. In the Orient, children are seldom seen 
playing together, and women seldom smile. 
Here, too, when Communism triumphs, the air 
will have lost its oxygen. There will be no 



SOCIALISM. 63 

more play, And there will be no more hero- 
ism. Moral character is of no account, so 
long as the work goes on. Genius is of no 
account, where the brightest must fare no 
better than the dullest. By and by, ambition 
is all gone. Competition is the name of a 
lost art. The arts are all lost. Coarser prod- 
ucts deteriorate. Production declines. Ev- 
erything declines. The alarm is sounded : 
We are going to ruin ; * we must all of us 
work more, and work better. Who shall 
make us work more and better? One an- 
other. And so our Paradise bristles with 
bayonets. 

We had better be calling things by their 
right names. This is no Paradise of men, 
but of animals : of dull oxen first, each under 
his own end of the yoke by day, and each at 
night in his own stall, yokes and stalls all 
alike ; presently, it will be of dogs, each 
growling and gnawing his well-picked bone ; 
by and by it will be of wolves, howling and 
chasing down the belated teams ; but at last 
it will be of tigers, tearing one another to 
pieces in the jungle. So the chapter, and 



64 COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM. 

so the volume, ends, this tragic volume of 
human history : at the bottom of the final 
page, after a fashion of the old printers, 
Memento mori> with skull and cross-bones, 
though not of man, but of beast. The cir- 
cle is now completed. The evolution ends. 
Beast thou art, and unto beast shalt thou re- 
turn. Whether Law or Gospel, science said 
it ; and so it is. 



III. 

ANTI-COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM. 



From the Communistic Socialism we turn 
to the Anti-Communistic, and at the same 
time merely Secular, Socialism, which will 
not detain us so long. The two have so 
much in common, that the separate points of 
interest, belonging exclusively to the latter, 
are comparatively few. 

Nothing has occurred in Europe these 
many years of so much real moment to po- 
litical science as what befell Paris and the 
French Republic in 1871.* Already the 
frightful horrors of the Commune are of less 
concern to history, than their acknowledged 
logical legitimacy, and what appears to have 
been their absolute conclusiveness. French 
Communism acted itself all out, pursuing 

♦Between March 18th, and May 27th, 1871. 

(65) 



66 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

every premise to its bitter conclusion. And 
whether France ever had common sense be- 
fore or not, she has it now. French Com- 
munism fell in that duel, and was buried 
where the road forks, that Europe may think 
twice before choosing which way to go. It 
is carved now on the monument, what Com- 
munism is. It denies and violates sacred 
natural rights of the individual. It is des- 
potism of the most searching and relentless 
character. As compared with any regal or 
imperial despotism, that France or any other 
nation ever saw, it is the bear that meets the 
man fleeing from the lion. Europe will think 
more than twice before going where the bear 
is. It is an immense gain to civilization, that 
France is now so nearly in her right mind, 
denouncing and deriding Communism as an 
exploded heresy, false to science, and fatal to 
every charm and charity of life. 

But Socialism in France survives Com- 
munism ; all the wiser for what has been for- 
gotten, all the stronger for what has been en- 
dured. It makes a great difference that labor 
is now using its own lungs and its own lips, 



SOCIALISM. 67 

stating and arguing its own case. The Work- 
ingmen's Congress, which met in Lyons on 
the 28th of January, 1878, and was in session, 
constantly debating the labor question, for 
twelve days, was attended by 140 delegates, 
nine of whom were women, and three of 
whom were peasants, representing most of 
the trades and districts of France. The 
speakers were not pestilent professional agi- 
tators, but all of them practical working men 
and women. The ablest man in the Con- 
gress, who would make his mark anywhere, 
doing credit to the training of the best schools, 
was Finance, a house-painter in Paris. Clear, 
incisive, rousing, he is evidently one of the born 
orators, whose felicities of utterance become 
the mottoes of banners and the watchwords 
of parties. The doings of that Congress, 
judging, as I have had to do, from a sketch 
and synopsis of them given by Frederic Har- 
rison in the subsequent May number of the 
Fortnightly Review, are a study for the 
wisest of our political economists. Besides 
Finance, two other Parisian workingmen, 
Magnin and Laporte, were prominent ; of 



68 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

whom Mr. Harrison says : " It is my deliber- 
ate conviction that nothing in modern eco- 
nomic literature exceeds the truth, the origi- 
nality, and the eloquence of these speeches by 
three Parisian workingmen." One is sur- 
prised, when he thinks of it, to see how the 
old Communistic leaders are forsaken. Fou- 
rier, Cabet, Louis Blanc are not even named ; 
and Proudhon is only incidentally quoted. 
These men were before the Deluge. The ora- 
cle now is Comte. The problem no longer is, 
how to abolish inequality of social condition, 
which is accepted as inevitable, but how to 
lessen it, smooth its sharp edges, and get the 
virus out of it ; dealing just now especially with 
the present exceptional distress of industry, 
but planning for a more stable and better fu- 
ture. One is curious to know what such 
men and women have to say, both in regard 
to what the matter is, and what shall be done 
about it * Finance charges the present dis- 
tress, first, upon machinery, and, secondly, 
upon the caprices of fashion. Capital is not 
in the way, is not to be abolished, is not even 
to be regulated by the State. Individual 



SOCIALISM. 69 

ownership of property is recognized as an 
advance upon communal. Property is sa- 
cred, as life and liberty are. The family 
also is sacred, guarded by the instincts of 
women, of whom it is finely said by Finance, 
that "their conscience is better than our 
science." The State is not to take matters 
in hand at all ; there is no remedy to be found 
in laws. Public opinion is our only hope. 
We need no n^w legislation, only a new 
morality ; something to stop this headlong 
rush for money. Theology is a melancholy 
failure, for it has nothing to say but to preach 
almsgiving to the rich, and resignation to the 
poor. In the final era, already dawning, la- 
bor shall take the place of war, science of 
theology, and humanity of God. 

Such is the new French Socialism ; in 
amazing contrast with that mad Communistic 
Socialism, which, only seven years ago, had 
to be shot down in the streets. I shall speak 
of it again in another connection. In this 
connection, I will simply call it a vain at 
tempt to realize the Christian morality, with- 
out the Christian religion. It does not say 



yo ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

with Agrippa, " Almost thou persuadest me 
to be a Christian.' ' Very likely it does not 
know, even as well as Agrippa did, what 
Christianity is. And so, at last, it will have 
to say to its coveted morality, as the dying- 
Brutus said to virtue, " I have pursued thee 
as a goddess, and find thee to be but a phan- 
tom. ,, 

Socialism in England is very decidedly En- 
glish, home-born and homely ; coming neither 
from abroad, nor from books. It has had very 
little to say for itself in the way of theory. 
The average English workingman would be far 
more likely to remind you, that "fine words 
butter no parsnips." The philosophy of the 
thing is left to Frenchmen and Germans. 
The only theory has been, that wages were 
too low, and that workingmen themselves 
must combine to push them up. And so the 
whole movement has resolved itself into a 
trial of strength and endurance between labor 
and capital. The struggle has been a very 
dogged one on both sides, altogether too 
rough sometimes, but gradually toning down, 



SOCIALISM. 71 

and tending on the whole to good results. 
Not only have wages risen, but labor and 
capital respect each other much more, and 
treat each other much better, than they did. 

The two main features of English Socialism 
are Trade-Unions and Strikes. The litera- 
ture of the subject is already considerable. 
Besides Toulmin Smith's "English Guilds/' 
with Brentano's Essay prefixed (1869), we 
may name, as specially noteworthy, the 
Comte de Paris' "Trades' Unions of En- 
gland," edited by Thomas Hughes (1869); 
Brassey's "Work and Wages" (1872); 
Thornton's elaborate work "On Labour" 
(1869); Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and 
Labour" (1878); and several Papers of 
marked ability by Frederic Harrison and 
others, in the Fortnightly Review. When 
the balance-sheet comes to be made up, it 
will probably appear that the Trade-Unions 
have done much good, with some harm ; 
while the Strikes have also done more eood 
than harm, but with the good and the harm 
more nearly balanced. The orthodox an- 



72 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

thropology, at all events, has apparently no 
revision to fear, since labor has proved that 
capital is supremely selfish, and capital has 
proved the same of labor. Each has had to 
look out for itself. No considerable number 
of capitalists have yet been found to pay 
higher wages than are demanded ; and no con- 
siderable number of laborers have been found 
to take lower wages than ai*e offered. 

Trade-Unions are peculiarly at home in 
England. More immediately, they succeed 
the mediaeval Craft-Guilds, which rendered 
such important service in developing the mid- 
dle class in Europe. More remotely, their 
descent is traced from the Frith-Guilds, which 
originated in England in the time of Ina (688 
-725 a.d.), and which, in the ninth and tenth 
centuries, became general throughout Europe. 
Frith-Guilds mark, as it were, the infancy of 
civil society, when it crosses the line of kin- 
ship, and the family begins to merge itself in 
the State. Their design was to supple- 
ment the deficiencies of the State. Guild 
now means a corporation or society. 



SOCIALISM. 73 

Orieinallv, it meant both a feast and the 
company gathered to it ; which suggests re- 
lationship to the ancient German gather- 
ings, which were both banquets and assem- 
blies of the people, at which all matters of 
public interest were considered and deter- 
mined. These old Frith-Guilds, or Town- 
Guilds, as they might be called, were partly 
social, partly religious, and partly protective.* 
Trade-Unions are neither social nor relig- 
ious, but simply protective ; not sodalities, 
but combinations. They have no use for fine 
phrases ; they care only for the rights and in- 
terests of their members, which are the rights 
and interests of labor. They unite in them- 
selves the advantages of Savings Banks and 
Mutual Assurance Companies. Each mem- 
ber pays, first, an admission fee, generally 
ranging from five to twenty shillings, accord- 
ing to the rank of the trade ; and, after that, . 
from twopence to a shilling a week, generally 
from three to four pence. Whoever has paid 
these dues, may be taken down with fever, 
without hearing the wolf at his door ; or give 

* Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and Labour," p. 4. 
4 



74 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

decent burial to one of his family, without 
running into debt to the undertaker. Lf fac- 
tories stop, for whichever of the reasons, 
whether to keep down production, or to keep 
down wages, the workmen have joint capital 
of their own to fall back upon ; not so very 
much, but enough for a good, stout fight 
either against hard times or hard masters. 

Associations resembling the present Trade- 
Unions existed in England before 1562, but 
they were pretty much confined to the build- 
ing trades. Trade-Unionism, as an important 
factor in the industrial life of the nation, has 
grown up out of the factory system. It be- 
gan just before the opening of the present 
century, but its main development has been 
within the last twenty years. The change 
from handiwork to machinery was a revolu- 
tion. Capital at once massed itself in few 
hands at a few great manufacturing centers. 
Labor also massed itself at the same centers. 
With production suddenly and immensely in- 
creased, violent fluctuations in market values, 
hardly possible under the old system, soon 
became frequent. Under these greatly 



SOCIALISM. 75 

changed conditions of massed capital, 
rtiassed labor, and increased production, 
even had the manufacturers been philan- 
thropists, experimenting in political economy, 
a satisfactory adjustment of wages would have 
been very difficult. Wages paid in flush times 
could not, of course, be paid in hard times. 
But workmen never like to have their wages 
reduced. Neither would they like it any bet- 
ter, nor so well, to have the rate fixed per- 
manently at some point between the highest 
and the lowest tide-water marks. When the 
tide was out, they would be no more than sat- 
isfied ; and hopelessly discontented every time 
the tide was in. But manufacturers were not 
philanthropists experimenting in political 
economy; they were only average English- 
men of their class, trying to make money, 
and, like the men employed by them, trying 
to make all they could. The less they paid 
out in wages, the more they had left after 
selling their goods ; the more they paid 
out in wages, the less they had left. Which 
now shall dictate to the other — labor to cap- 
ital, or capital to labor? Of course, the 



76 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

stronger to the weaker. And capital is now 
much stronger than labor ; strengthened by 
the massing, which has weakened labor al- 
most to helplessness. Goods need not be 
sold to-morrow, nor next day ; but labor 
must find a market for itself or starve. Cap- 
ital was tempted. And it must be confessed, 
that capital was hard on labor. But it was 
English labor, six hundred years after Run- 
nymede ; and again the right triumphed. 
English labor emancipated itself from the tyr- 
anny of English capital. Wages, that were 
too low, and would have remained so, are 
now as high, perhaps, as they can be without 
ruining trade. Many abuses have been re- 
formed. Working hours have been reduced 
in most branches of industry, except in fac- 
tories, and even there for women and chil- 
dren. Best of all, laborers in general are 
decidedly more intelligent and more moral. 
The Trade-Unions are Banks, and Assurance 
Companies, and Schools, and Debating Clubs, 
all in one. They are steadily educating their 
members in self-control, self-respect, and in 
the laws of trade; and they are steadily. 



SOCIALISM. 77 

weeding out the really objectionable features 
in their own organization and management. 
In 1 87 1, after a most searching investigation 
of their affairs, they were legalized by Act of 
Parliament. Dullest and last of all, agricult- 
ural laborers formed a Trade-Union in 1872, 
So now the whole industry of the nation is 
thoroughly organized. Some 3,000 societies 
are in existence, enrolling at least a million 
and a quarter of workmen. Thus far they 
have had little or nothing to do with politics. 
They will make themselves felt in t\e gov- 
ernment of the country by and by. 

Strikes are not altogether modern. Indeed, 
few things are modern, except some of our 
mechanical inventions. A real strike occur- 
red in England, causing great embarrassment 
and loss, at the time of the Black Death, in 
1349; but was not known by this name, the 
word not being found either in Johnson's 
Dictionary, or in Adam Smith's "Wealth 
of Nations." Strikes have been a part of the 
tactics of labor in its hard struggle with capi- 
tal ; and have been strongly condemned, even 



78 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

by some of the best friends of the laboring 
classes. They are simply combined refusals 
to work for the wages that are offered. And if 
no personal violence is inflicted, or threatened, 
and no damage is done to property, the right 
of men in masses to refuse work, is just as 
clear as their right to do so individually, 
which nobody disputes. But the policy of 
strikes is another matter. The good they 
may do is certainly done at great cost, and 
with serious drawbacks. On a rising market 
for goods, strikes for an advance of wages 
usually succeed, manufacturers, it may be, 
having orders to fill, or, at all events, seeing 
a profit for themselves in spite of the advance. 
But on a declining market, strikes against a 
reduction of wages usually fail, manufacturers 
sometimes being more than willing to shut 
down their mills. Successful, or unsuccess- 
ful, they leave a sting behind, for they are 
warlike ; and civilized nations have learned 
that arbitration is better than war. The 
Trade - Unions, wiser than workmen were 
twenty years ago, have greatly diminished 



SOCIALISM. 79 

the frequency of strikes, and expect in no 
long time to prevent them altogether. 

In our own country, the organization of 
labor is a long way behind what it is in En- 
gland. Indeed, until very recently labor had 
almost nothing to complain of. Wages have 
been so high, that America has been called 
the Paradise of labor. Now, for the first 
time in our history, wages are sinking down 
towards, and, in some trades, have already 
reached the European level, perhaps have 
even gone below it. Hence great distress, 
and still greater outcry about distress, from 
one end of the country to the other. Congress 
did wisely at its last session in appointing the 
Labor Committee, of which Mr. Hewitt is the 
intelligent and able chairman, to inquire into 
the causes of this distress, and suggest reme- 
dies. And this Committee have done wisely 
in giving a hearing to all classes of theorists 
and malcontents. Most of them were Com- 
munists ; and sensible people have to thank 
them for making Communism ridiculous. 



80 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

Wiser men have followed. And whatever 
the Committee may conclude to say, the pop- 
ular verdict, by an overwhelming majority, will 
probably be, that the present distress is due 
to causes, general and special, and calls for 
remedies, with which the Government, whether 
of any State, or of the whole Nation, has al- 
most nothing at all to do. For example, the 
Government has no business to meddle with 
wages ; nor to limit the hours of work, ex- 
cept for minors ; and would do well to let 
even the rate of interest, like the price of corn 
or of any other commodity, take care of itself. 
One thing it might very properly do : it might 
establish, as Massachusetts has already done, 
a Labor Bureau, whose business it should be 
to collect and tabulate statistics of every sort 
pertaining to the industries of the country, 
adding those also of other countries, which 
would not only be of great service to individ- 
uals in search of remunerative employment, 
but might also lead to the opening of new 
channels of trade. Such information for the 
masses would be quite as legitimate a func- 
tion of Government as the teaching of chil- 



SOCIALISM. 8 1 

dren in the Common School. Anything more 
than this Government should be slow to un- 
dertake. Schemes of colonization, in the in- 
terest of agriculture, would not be wise. De- 
sirable immigrants will make their own way 
into new territories. Protective tariffs, in 
the interest of manufactures, can be justified 
only as a temporary expedient in order to na- 
tional independence, especially in case of war. 
Absolute free trade everywhere, it must, how- 
ever, be considered, will inevitably bring labor 
to one level ; a level to be determined by 
China more than by France, England, or the 
United States. Subsidies, in the interest of 
commerce, may help the infancy of great enter 
prises ; but, in the long run, trade will do best 
to be let alone. Again, if patents are issued as 
a just reward, and proper stimulant, of inven- 
tion, a limit should be set to prices put upon 
patented articles. Three or four times the 
actual cost of manufacture, is an extortion, 
against which the public has a right to be pro- 
tected. One of the most vital questions of the 
day relates to Corporations. Some things, too 
large for individual enterprise, may undoubt- 

4* 



82 ANTI-COMMUMISTIC 

edly be much better managed by Corpora- 
tions than by Governments. But when a 
Railway Corporation can dictate its own char- 
ter, and is permitted to injure the property of 
individuals without indemnity, or is exempted 
from taxation, or can so " water" its stock as 
to put fortunes that were never earned into 
the pockets of a favored few, the time has 
come for indignant denunciation and radical 
reform, unless we prefer to wait awhile for a 
revolution. Corporation abuses are now sim- 
ply monstrous, and have got to be stopped. 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has expressed 
the opinion, that " if any change had taken 
place in the power of the railroads over legisla- 
tion within the past few years, he thought it 
had slightly diminished. ,, Some sort of gov- 
ernmental supervision of railroads is certain- 
ly desirable, but may easily be carried too 
far. Governmental ownership is hardly to be 
thought of. And yet incorporated turnpikes, 
once very common and very serviceable, have 
now almost everywhere given place to public 
highways. 

It all comes to this, that labor, by which in 



SOCIALISM. 83 

this connection I mean muscular drudgery, 
must for the most part look out for itself. 
For the present this may well be done by 
Co-operative Associations of one kind and 
another, not unlike the Trade-Unions of En- 
gland. The organization of a Labor Party 
in politics, I feel constrained to say, seems to 
me not the best thing to be done. The ques- 
tions to be settled are questions of political 
economy, which ought, on every account, to 
be settled dispassionately. Men may vote as 
they please, but the laws of production and 
of trade are as inexorable as the laws of nat- 
ure. Water will not run up hill ; two and two 
do not make five ; and greenbacks are not 
money. The fact is, our industries are out 
of normal proportion to one another. Manu- 
factures and commerce have outrun agriculture. 
Farming towns have been losing their popu- 
lation. Factory villages and cities have been 
multiplying. We have manufactured more 
than we could find a market for; and have 
built more railways than were needed. We 
thought we were manufacturing and building 
only a little ahead of the demand ; we have 



84 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

learned, to our cost, and to our humiliation, 
that we were also ruinously ahead of divi- 
dends. There is only one road out of this 
trouble, between the high stone-walls of in- 
dustry and economy. Such another inflation 
of our currency as seemed necessary during 
the Civil War, would now be like the relapse 
which sometimes follows a typhoid fever ; the 
last state of the patient would be much worse 
than the first. The safety of universal suf- 
frage will soon be tested as never before in 
our history. Should our demagogues suc- 
ceed in committing an ignorant and head- 
strong majority to the financial heresies of 
late so current, we are in for another financial 
agony. Another such agony as we have just 
experienced might indeed provoke a very 
prompt reaction, and make this soft-money 
nonsense forevermore impossible. But a 
people of our boasted intelligence ought not 
to be fooled in this way. We can not afford 
to repeat the experiment. Once in a genera- 
tion is enough. Jealousy of capital, organized 
and inaugurated as a permanent factor in our 
political life, would imperil first our whole 



socialism; 85 

prosperity, and then our free institutions. 
Legislation unfriendly to capital would 
frighten it off to other countries, where it 
might hope for better treatment. Or if other 
countries join in the crusade against it, then 
it wastes everywhere rapidly away. Some 
German Socialistic writers, in discussing the 
sources of wealth, name only nature and la- 
bor, omitting capital, which Malthus and oth- 
ers, of the older and better school, have 
named as the third source. Capital, to be 
sure, is the product of past labor, but labor 
itself has not conserved it. If, as Theremin 
says, eloquence is a virtue, one is tempted to 
say the same of capital. It represents not 
intelligence only, but self-denial and self- 
control. Wages have been saved that 
might have been spent in show or luxury. 
Not many men are very rich, any more than 
many men have genius. And it requires even 
greater ability, and greater care of course, to 
keep a fortune than to make it. The idea of 
crowding incomes down to some prescribed 
maximum, is now, after all the experience of 
ages, an idea worthy of Bedlam. Labor with- 



86 ANTI-COMMUNISTIC 

out capital, is to-day without yesterday. 
Capital is indispensable to labor in the pro- 
duction of any considerable amount of wealth. 
And then there are higher uses. Capital 
procures leisure ; leisure promotes culture ; 
culture multiplies wants ; wants stimulate 
production. Labor all the while is taking 
lessons of capital, and multiplying its own 
wants, which are likewise * to be supplied. 
And so the two help each other on. Higher 
wages, without higher tastes and wants, 
would be only a curse, and not a blessing. 
Capital is finer than labor, just as brain is 
finer than muscle. But there should be no 
schism. The duel now arranging between 
labor and capital, ought to become a debate. 
Labor is too well informed to be kept in the 
dark in regard to the dividends of capital; 
and may be trusted by and by, if not imme- 
diately, to demand for itself only what is just, 
for this reason, if for no other, that in the long 
run only the just is politic. A thoroughly 
good understanding between labor and capi- 
tal is of equal importance to both of them. 



SOCIALISM. 87 

If capital is foolish, it will madden labor into 
permanent insurrection. If labor is foolish, 
it will insist upon the submission of capital, 
and discover too late that its triumph is fatal 
to civilization and to itself. 



IV. 
CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 



We come now to the Christian Socialism. 

One might hesitate to put these two words 
together ; partly, as risking offence to Chris- 
tian people who associate nothing good with 
Socialism, partly, as risking the imputation of 
seeming to court the favor of Socialists who 
associate nothing good with Christianity. 
Strauss, in his "Life of Jesus, " criticises the 
unlettered, childless peasant of Galilee for the 
narrow range of his teachings, which ignore, 
as Strauss alleges, science, art, the family, 
and the State. And the new French Social- 
ism, as we have seen, waves its adieu to 
Christianity as a social failure, on the ground 
that almsgiving and resignation are its last 
words. If these are indeed its last words, 
then the time for adieus has come. Chris- 
tianity may sail on, down the horizon, out of 
sight, out of mind, and we will wait till some 

(88) 



CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 89 

other ship, with a better device upon her 
streaming flag, comes ploughing through this 
black and bitter sea. But almsgiving and 
resignation are not the last words. There 
must be a real Christian Socialism ; and there 
is. Dumb animals know who their friends 
are ; so do children ; so do plain men. The 
sympathies of the common people, as we call 
them, who have most need to better their 
condition, went over to the side of Christianity 
when it was first preached in one of the most 
severely governed provinces of the Roman 
Empire ; and have remained on that side ever 
since. In many a struggle with Brahminism, 
Buddhism has carried the day as the more 
democratic religion. Christianity has had al- 
ways the same advantage over every other 
religion with which it has ever measured 
its strength. Somehow, it has captured the 
hearts of men. If, just now, there be any- 
where, in the older Christian countries, what 
looks like a popular revulsion from Christian- 
ity, it is not spontaneous and natural, but in- 
stigated, strange, and exceptional. When, 
either by the bigotry of its friends, or the 



90 CHRISTIAN 

malice of its enemies, Christianity is narrow- 
ed down into mere religion, we shall find men 
preferring the good Samaritans. 

Practical Christianity is both religion and 
philanthropy, love to God, and love to man ; 
the former impossible without the latter. This 
problem of social inequality, now agitating 
the civilized world, is older than Christianity. 
Christianity has never been indifferent to it, 
and never can be. Better even than the 
miracle that followed, was this saying of our 
Lord: " I have compassion on the multitude, 
because they have now been with me three 
days, and have nothing to eat. And if I send 
them away fasting to their own houses, they 
will faint by the way." From this first and 
lowest of human wants to the highest, Chris- 
tianity extends its care ; but indulges in no 
sentimentality. First of all, it must know the 
facts. Like a wise physician, it undertakes to 
cure only the curable ; and in every case pre- 
scribes for the disease, not for its symptoms. 

Obviously, there is much inequality of so- 



SOCIALISM. 91 

cial condition, which results from inequality 
of endowment. From genius like that of 
Francis Bacon, down to the dullness of a 
Yorkshire peasant, the distance is even 
greater than any difference there can be in 
food, raiment, or social environment. It is 
folly to commiserate the peasant, if only he 
has his human rights, and is comfortable. It 
would be absurd to offer him advantages he 
could not improve. And it would be wicked 
to inflame him with a discontent, which is 
simply rebellion against the Providential or- 
dering of his lot. The system under which 
he lives, is, after all, much more elastic than it 
seems. Under the most oppressive institu- 
tions, of any age, it is astonishing how quick- 
ly condition responds to character and cult- 
ure. Epictetus was born a slave ; perhaps 
also Plautus. Christendom cares as much 
for Onesimus as it does for Philemon ; pos- 
sibly a little more. There is no mistaking 
where the stress is laid; not on endowment, 
but on the use made of it. In moral endow- 
ment we fare alike, as in the Parable of the Ten 
Pounds. In bodily and mental endowment 



92 CHRISTIAN 

we differ, as in the Parable of the Talents. 
But in both it is use, and not quantity, that 
measures our real stature, and determines our 
destiny. Equality of social condition, with 
inequality of endowment, would be no kind- 
ness to anybody. If once established, it 
could not endure. Whoever properly re- 
spects himself, asks for nothing but a hearty 
recognition of his manhood, as Burns puts it 
in one of the finest of his poems. And 
Christianity looks out for that. Slavery has 
gone down before it over all the globe. Des- 
potisms that could not be cured, have yet been 
softened by it. Republics, which Gervinus 
sees at the end of the historic course, are 
born of it. But it breeds no Catalines. You 
need not smite the vase in which an acorn is 
planted ; the growing oak will shatter it. At 
bottom, it is an immorality to fight against 
this inequality of condition, which simply cor- 
responds with inequality of endowment. Only 
what he has honestly gained by a fair use of 
his gifts and opportunities, should any man 
desire. And all that he has thus gained, 



SOCIALISM. 93 

should every other man be willing, and more 
than willing, that he should have. 

The aristocracy of eminent ability is not 
large, and never will be. How many Crom- 
wells and Miltons may have died in their moth- 
ers' arms, nobody knows. But the grown 
up Cromwells and Miltons have all been 
heard from. Mere culture is not creative. 
Very few men ever originate anything. The 
bulk of mankind are very common people, 
and always will be. Great bankers and mer- 
chants are as rare as great philosophers and 
poets. The possibilities of production are 
also limited. There never can be property 
enough in the world for everybody to be rich. 
The great mass of mankind, at best, will get 
only a little more than their daily bread for 
their daily labor. We brought nothing into 
the world, can carry nothing out, and, be- 
tween these two poverties, behind and before, 
are instructed to be content with food and 
raiment. The present wealth of England is 
exceptional, being nearly five-fold what it was 
when she began her manufacturing career 



94 CHRISTIAN 

seventy-five years ago, with more than twice 
as much now as then, were it equally divided, 
for every man, woman, and child in the king- 
dom. She will have to share that wealth 
with us, just as soon as we make her share 
with us the markets of the world. Then 
other nations will challenge both of us. And 
at last, when the whole globe comes to be 
densely peopled, like Belgium and Holland, 
and every people shall do its utmost to sup- 
ply its own wants, the daily prayer for daily 
bread will be an honest and an urgent prayer 
from the rising to the setting sun. The 
resignation then preached and practised will 
not be cowardly submission to social wrong, 
but submission to Providence, to law, to nat- 
ure. 

We have to meet the question of graded 
compensation. How shall workmen be paid 
for what they do ? By the day, or by the 
job ? By the day, says Communism ; and all 
alike, no matter what difference there may be 
with respect to skill, quickness, or diligence 
in any given kind of work, no matter what 
difference there may be with respect to the 



SOCIALISM. 95 

kinds of work. Men are equal, and one 
man's time is no more precious than another's. 
Eieht hours of the finest brain-work shall 
bring in no more than eight hours of the 
coarsest hand - work. This Communistic 
claim to indiscriminate wages is simply pre- 
posterous, and Christianity need not be ask- 
ed for an opinion about it. But as between 
time-work and job-work, an opinion may well 
be asked for. While graded endowment 
grades work, and graded work grades wages, 
personality is always sacred, and is most se- 
cure when one is most absolutely master of 
his own time. It may not be wise, but I con- 
fess I look with some pity upon the day la- 
borer, whose time is not his own, whether it 
be for ten hours, or only for eight, or six. I 
remember what is said of the "master's eye," 
and would rather not be the one to get more 
work out of men in this way than would be 
realized if the men were left to themselves. 
It is better all round that job-work be substi- 
tuted for time-work whenever and wherever 
it can possibly be done. " Built by the day," 
recommends a house, to be sure. But careful 



g6 CHRISTIAN 

superintendence ought to be a sufficient pro- 
tection against slighted work; and the fair 
thing is to pay, and be paid, for just what is 
actually done. 

The question of women's wages, which has 
delicate and important moral relations, is 
easily settled on this basis of job-work. In 
time-work, muscle must determine wages, de- 
manding more for men than for women. It 
is also urged, in justification of lower wages 
for women, that men have more responsibil- 
ity than women for the support of others. 
But it frequently happens that one woman, 
an elder daughter perhaps, is the main stay 
of a whole household. This, however, is 
shifting the ground of a discrimination some- 
times made, or maintained, for the basest of 
reasons. It were more just, and better every 
way, that the work actually done be paid for, 
no matter who does it, man or woman. In 
job-work physical inequality is of no account. 
Moral equality suggests equality of wages. 
This thing will have to be looked after by an 
advancing civilization. 

The introduction of machinery necessitates 



SOCIALISM. 97 

a new adjustment of wages. The man who 
rides the mowing machine all day should get 
more than the man who swings the scythe ; 
and the weaver in a cotton mill should get 
more than the weaver at a hand loom ; 
partly, because labor is a unit as well as cap- 
ital, partly, because some machinery must be 
very skillfully, and all of it very carefully, 
used, but partly also because so much more 
grass is cut, and so much more cloth is made, 
and the advantage of machinery should not 
belong exclusively to capital. 

Extra hard and hazardous labor calls for 
extra pay. The miner should get more than 
the wood-chopper, the engineer and fireman 
more than the sailor, because the risk to 
health and life is so much greater in the one 
case than in the other. 

The just and proper minimum of wages for 
the humbler grades of labor, is another nice, 
and important question. Political economy 
answers the question promptly enough. La- 
bor, it is said, must be sold, as its products 
are sold, for what it will fetch. The laborer 
names his price, and the employer may give 



98 CHRISTIAN 

it or not, as he pleases. Or the employer 
makes an offer, and the laborer accepts it or 
not, as he pleases. It is contract, and noth- 
ing more. Legally, the laborer can claim 
only the enforcement of the contract, which 
the employer also may claim. This all seems 
fair enough. But from the Christian stand- 
point, it may be anything but fair. I need 
not sell to-day the corn, or the hay, I have 
just harvested ; but with my labor to sell, 
and nothing else, I must sell it to-day, or 
starve, or beg, or steal. And so capital has 
me at a prodigious disadvantage, compelling 
me to take less than I ask, less than I ought 
to have. Capital has no need to confer with 
capital, has no need to organize against la- 
bor ; it is in itself already an organization 
from the start. Once in a while, as in the 
height of harvesting, with great crops and 
few to gather them, or, in a sudden freshet, 
with dams and embankments giving way, la- 
bor can name its own terms. But ordinarily 
the job will keep, and capital can wait till la- 
bor is hungry enough to accept what is offer- 
ed. That this great advantage of capital has 



SOCIALISM. 99 

been much abused, is beyond dispute. Labor 
has been oppressed by capital, crowded down 
towards the point of bare subsistence. Here 
Christianity steps in as the champion of labor, 
demanding that, in times of ordinary pros- 
perity, workmen shall not, like oxen, get 
barely enough to keep them in good working 
condition. It is due the manhood of the 
humblest workman, that, with good economic 
and moral habits, he shall ordinarily have a 
margin to live upon, lying down at night with 
something in store for another day. 

Christianity has a word also for the work- 
man. Him, too, it admonishes to beware of 
the greed of gain ; denounces violence and 
exorbitant demands; and lays it upon his 
conscience, when wages are lowest, if pos- 
sible, to spend less than he earns. 

As between employers and employed, brain 
and muscle, capital and labor, Political Econ- 
omy sees only a selfish struggle, ending at 
best in a selfish compromise. Christianity 
proposes a hearty concord between the more 
favored few and the less favored many, what- 
ever may be the ratio between them, whether 



IOO CHRISTIAN 

as one to two, or as one to four. The law is, 
" Let each esteem other better than them- 
selves. Look not every man on his own 
things, but every man also on the things of 
others/' If this be impossible, then a per- 
manent high civilization is impossible ; for 
there can be no high civilization without free- 
dom, and no freedom without the inequality 
of condition which corresponds with the rec- 
ognized inequality of endowment. 

Unavoidable inequality of condition comes 
also in part through sickness, accident, and 
premature bereavement, which frequently re- 
duce whole families to want. A riper Chris- 
tian civilization may probably be relied upon 
to lessen the absolute pauperism resulting 
from such casualties, by stimulating men to 
forethought and frugality. But this tax upon 
Christian charity will never wholly cease. 
And the entire problem of Christian charity 
needs to be thoroughly overhauled. Hos- 
pitals for poor sick people, it is now well 
known, are not so exclusively Christian as 
used to be supposed. Buddhists had them 



SOCIALISM. IOI 

some time before the Christian era. But the 
way they multiplied during the fourth century, 
when Christianity began to be felt as a new 
civilization, struck the heathen world with 
amazement. The Graeco-Roman civilization 
had produced nothing of the kind ; indeed, it 
had produced hardly a charitable institution 
of any kind. Poor Laws existed in Athens, 
but nowhere else in Greece, so far as we 
know. The distribution of corn in Rome, 
whether at half price, as by the law of the 
elder Gracchus, or gratuitously, as afterwards 
by the law of Clodius, was the work, not of 
philanthropists, but mostly of demagogues.* 
Christianity, beginning with the personal min- 
istry of its Founder, has cared always for the 
poor. But great mistakes have been made. 
Impulse has had too much, and cool judgment 
has had too little, to do in the matter. Our 
Lord's economy is conspicuous in the great 
miracles of feeding. The thousands were 
marshalled with a sort of military precision 
and the fragments were carefully gathered up 



* Woolsey's " Political Science," § 249. 



102 CHRISTIAN 

With His followers, the waste and loss have 
been enormous, both in private and in public 
charities ; so that one is tempted to think, 
and to say, that the good done in relieving 
want has been equalled, if not exceeded, by 
the evil done in fostering and perpetuating 
pauperism. The better the charity, the worse 
it has been abused, as, for example, in En- 
gland. So now, after the experience of ages, 
how to deal wisely with pauperism is one of 
the most difficult questions in political science. 
It will certainly never do for us to forget, that 
what may be called the poverty of misfortune 
is small in amount compared with what may 
be called the poverty of fault. And certainly 
there ought to be some way of making a dif- 
ference between the two. Neither will it do 
for us to forget, that there is a great risk in 
charity, at the best. The risk is that of en- 
feebling the will of the receiver. Absolute 
gratuities are hazardous, much more so than 
good people generally are aware of. Free beds 
in hospitals must continue to be furnished, as 
are free seats in churches, but low-priced beds, 
and low-priced seats, are better still. 



SOCIALISM. 103 

Another cause of inequality of condition, 
partly curable, is commercial fluctuation. Com- 
mercial risks are greatest of all. Agriculture 
has its own risks from drought, flood, frost, 
noxious insects, and the like. Manufacturing 
has its risks, mainly from the freaks of fashion. 
The risks of commerce include all these, with 
others of its own. But the periodicity of 
commercial ups and downs, as of French 
Revolutions, with their cycles of twenty 
years, suggests the working of a law. It is 
the fever-heat of excessive speculation, some- 
times caused by, sometimes causing, excess- 
ive production, which is followed by its ague 
chill. Everybody is wise in the event, and 
after it, for a while. But fever is in the air 
again, and the wisest mistake it for summer 
warmth ; or, if not deceived themselves, have 
to suffer with others. One might expect 
some good from the lessons of history by 
and by, were not these lessons already so old 
and familiar. There is light enough to sail 
by, were it only at the right end of the ship ; 
prow light, instead of stern light. The only 
chance of good is in moderating the greed of 



104 CHRISTIAN 

gain. It is now a dreadful fever, holding its 
own till the frost comes, the sharp frost of 
adversity. Christianity undertakes to drive it 
out of the blood. Covetousness is challenged 
as idolatry, and the love of money is de- 
nounced as the root of all evil. If now there 
be anything in Christianity beyond its lessons, 
if it be a power, as well as a protest, we may 
hope for Christians enough by and by to 
make the commerce of the world more sane 
and sober. 

But the chief cause of inequality of con- 
dition, wholly curable, is immorality of some 
sort, but especially in the use of intoxicating 
drinks. Most of the pauperism which we are 
taxed to support, and most of the crimes 
which we are taxed either to prevent or to 
punish, may be traced directly to this single 
source. Legislation on the subject has been 
stigmatized as sumptuary. It is no such 
thing. It is not the cost of the indulgence 
that is considered, nor the effect of it upon 
the individual, but the effect of it upon his 
family, who may be beggared by it, and 



SOCIALISM. I€5 

thrown upon the public for support. The 
thing sought to be restrained, is the immoral- 
ity of injuring others. One way of doing 
this is by strict License Laws, rigidly en- 
forced. The argument for such Laws is, that 
they respect the liberty of the individual, and 
leave room for moral suasion. The argument 
against them is, that they license an immoral- 
ity. Another way of doing the same thing 
is by absolute prohibition. The argument 
for this is, that it is self-consistent and effect- 
ual. The argument against it is, that it in- 
fringes upon the liberty of the individual, 
attempts the impossible, and will only make 
matters worse in the end. The argument 
from experience in the case of the famous 
Maine Law, is not considered altogether con- 
clusive. The great success of prohibitory 
legislation in the State where it originated 
twenty-seven years ago, is now generally ad- 
mitted. Neither of the two great political 
parties dares to disturb the Law. Crime has 
sensibly diminished, and pauperism has been 
almost annihilated. But Maine is a border 
State, with a homogeneous population, most- 
5* 



iq6 christian 

ly rural ; and success there, it may be said, 
gives no assurance of success in States like 
Massachusetts and New York, whose ex- 
posure is greater, whose populations are 
more mixed, and whose cities are larger and 
more numerous. Either way, we have ascer- 
tained to a certainty the origin of nearly all 
our abject and stubborn, pauperism, and 
Christian philanthropy sees clearly just what 
it is called upon to do. 

There certainly remains no very consider- 
able amount of social inequality fairly charge- 
able upon the selfishness of capital. Much 
that did exist has already yielded to the 
equally selfish pressure of labor; and more 
of it will have to yield to the same pressure. 
A wise Christian Socialism would rather see 
the struggle ended quickly by the manly con- 
cession to labor of all its rights. 

In short, the social problem is complex. 
Inequality of condition is only in part avoid- 
able, only in part deplorable. So much of it 
as corresponds with inequality of endowment, 
is no more than graded wages for graded 



SOCIALISM. I07 

work. So much of it as results from casual- 
ties, is simply Providential. So much of it as 
follows commercial fever, must be expected 
as commercial chill. So much of it as has a 
vicious parentage, must endure the righteous 
retribution. And so much of it as Christian- 
ity can not approve, Christianity should in- 
telligently, promptly, and indignantly rebuke. 
But there must be no wild dreams of an im- 
possible abundance, gathered without care or 
toil. For mankind at large the surplus must 
always be small, and the margin narrow. To 
the end of time, if men would get on pros- 
perously, they must learn just these two les- 
sons of intelligent industry and strict econ- 
omy. 

Secular Socialism, whether Communistic or 
Anti-Communistic, mistakes the true relation 
of social condition to character. It assumes 
that equality of condition will ultimately bring 
about equality of character ; and that the con- 
dition being good, the character will also be 
good. This is not according to human ex- 
perience. Undoubtedly some poor men steal 



108 CHRISTIAN 

because they are poor, who would not steal 
if they w r ere not poor. But not all poor men 
steal. And some of the worst stealing in 
our day has been done by men who were far 
enough from being poor. The fact is, char- 
acter determines condition far more than con- 
dition determines character. Aristotle saw 
this very clearly. Arguing against Commun- 
ism, he says the evils complained of arise, 
none of them, from not having things in com- 
mon, but from the moral badness of mankind.* 
This precisely is the assumption of Christian- 
ity. No religion was ever so intensely demo- 
cratic. But it levels up. Nothing is ever 
levelled down but pride, egotism, haughty 
and hateful self-assertion. The incurable is 
declared and accepted. The curable is brought 
home to the consciousness, and to the con- 
science, of the individual. We learn to say, 
with Cassius : 

" The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.' ' 

The one persistent challenge of Christianity 
is, "Make -the tree good." No matter how 

* "Politica," B. ii. 5. 



SOCIALISM. 109 

good the soil is : grapes will not come of 
thorns, nor figs of thistles. 

But it will not do to say, no matter how 
bad the soil is. It does matter. Grapes may 
be very sour, and figs may be very bad. 
Good fruit requires good soil. In villages on 
the Lebanon, Christian houses are known by 
the glazed windows, which have taken the 
place of wooden shutters, that men and wom- 
en may read their Bibles through the winter 
storms. It is a sure instinct which has thus 
bettered the condition of poor peasants. The 
same instinct demands a bettered condition 
for others as well as for ourselves. And he 
is a poor Christian who does not concern 
himself about the condition of others. 

It is a monstrous heresy to suppose and 
say, that character being right, condition will 
take care of itself. You might just as well 
suppose and say, that religion being right, 
morality will take care of itself. Martin Lu- 
ther hurt Protestantism when he called the 
Epistle of James " a veritable Straw-Epistle." 
Morality must be preached, or immorality 
will abound, in spite of justification by faith. 



110 CHRISTIAN 

So must condition be cared for, if Christianity 
holds its own in these fast-coming days of 
challenge and conflict. 

That Christianity will hold its own, I do 
not for a moment doubt. To be sure, it has 
never perfectly realized its Divine ideal. But 
always it has been the best thing in the world ; 
and always it has conquered the world. In 
the Ancient Age, it was ascetic against licen- 
tiousness. In the Middle Age, it was auto- 
cratic against violence. In the Modern Age, 
it will be humane against selfishness. 

Many there be who say that this our Chris- 
tian civilization is mortal like every other, 
from the Chaldsean down ; that this sacred 
river, too, is on its way to the Bitter Sea ; is 
already shooting the rapids ; Hermon, with 
its transfiguring glory, far behind ; Galilee, 
with its Cana and its beatitudes, behind; Sa- 
maria behind, with its Joseph's tomb and its 
Jacob's well; the Judsean hills that are round 
about Jerusalem sinking one by one. Fear 
not. Declension is not apostasy ; discipline 
is not destruction. It is the bitterness of the 
Sea, not the sweetness of the River, that is 



SOCIALISM. 1 1 1 

doomed. Consider the vision of the Prophet. 
The little stream from under the threshold of 
the Sanctuary, rising to the ankles, to the 
knees, to the loins, becomes a river to swim 
in, and the waters of the Sea are healed. 




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